


Keeps Me Awake

by Hinn_Raven



Series: RVB Angst War [5]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, RvB Angst War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 02:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6138754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carolina's haunted by her ghosts. Well. Ghost. Maybe she's more like her father than she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeps Me Awake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sroloc_Elbisivni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/gifts).



> The continuing adventures of the angst war! Nina asked for Yorkalina, "I told you not to come back." I immediately went ghost AU, because I’m a terrible person like that.

“I told you not to come back,” Carolina didn’t even turn around to look at him.

He laughed quietly, brushing his fingers along her back. It was like he’d touched her with ice—a ghost’s hands were cold enough to be felt through her armor.

“I can’t leave, remember? Haunting and all that.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of her table. She could see right through him, just like every other time he’d appeared.

She hadn’t believed in ghosts. Until she’d woken up to see him sitting on her couch, as confused as she was, looking like he had the last time she’d seen him without armor—a yellow t-shirt and jeans, and the scar on his eye faded with time

“Why can’t you move on?” She asked him for the thousandth time. She didn’t expect an answer anymore. He never had one, or if he did, it was only a joke.  

“I don’t know,” he moved her hair out of her face. His expression was gentle, and she wanted to scream. She always did.

She didn’t even know if he was real; no one else had ever seen him, not that she had company… well, _ever_. He just stayed in her apartment, quietly teasing her and reminding her of everything she’d lost. He was a terrible ghost. He didn’t even move her things around or try to scare her. He’d laughed when she’d told him that. She’d woken up to all the furniture in the house rearranged.

“Go away, York,” she told him tiredly, and he vanished, just as he always did.

She closed her eyes. She wondered if this was what had happened to her father—if her mother had haunted him until he _had_ to try to bring her back, because it was too hard, seeing her and not being able to touch her.

She took a shuddering breath, and went about her day.

“You know, I have a theory.” He seemed more solid today, and for a moment Carolina wanted to try to touch him, even though she’d given up on that three days into this.

“What’s that?” She asked, pushing her hair back.

“Well, I mean, why do ghosts usually come back?” He sat on her counter, smiling at her. His blind eye seemed to twinkle. “Because there’s unfinished business.”

“Wyoming is dead,” Carolina said, opening the fridge to try to decide what she’d be making for dinner.

“I’m thinking it’s probably older unfinished business than that, ‘Lina.”

She froze. “Do you mean Freelance—” She turned around, and he was gone.

Of course he was.

It wasn’t like it had never occurred to her that Freelancer was what was tying York to this world, but that was _done_. Washington had brought it down, and gone to prison for it, and then died trying to get out. That’s what all the reports said, anyway.  

Her stomach churned as she thought about the Director.

No. That couldn’t be it. If it was as easy as that, there’d be a thousand ghosts haunting her apartment. Instead, it was just York with his easy smile and familiar laugh.

“I don’t even have my armor,” she said to no one. They’d taken it after they found her, taken it and sent her to this apartment, so they could monitor her, make sure none of the others approached her.

It wasn’t until York had died and told her everything had she realized she was bait for Texas. The thought tasted sour in her mouth.

Almost as sour as the reminder that the Director still hadn’t ccome to see her, even though years had passed. Her legs were better now—physical therapy had done its job. She’d thought about pestering for reassignment, but then there had been York, and then Freelancer had come crashing down around Wash’s ears.

“Is this really what you’re doing, Carolina?” York was lying on her couch, his toes brushing up against her leg. “Just waiting?”

“I don’t know what to _do_ , York,” she snapped.

He laughed. “Are you waiting for me to tell you what to do? C’mon. You know what you have to do. You just don't want to admit it.”

She clenched her fists. “You don’t know anything—” She began to say hotly.

“I don’t care if I’ll vanish, ‘Lina,” he said flatly. “You can’t just keep holding onto me!”

“I’m not—”

“Are you just going to let him get away with it?” York rarely raised his voice, but he was yelling now. “You _know_ what he did, and you hate him even more than I do! You keep asking me to go away, but you won’t do anything about it!”

Carolina tried to punch him, but it went right through, and he vanished. He always left when she asked him too. He just couldn’t stay away. He wasn’t capable of it.

It had been easier when she could pretend that this—the apartment, the seclusion—had been out of concern for her. She could justify everything then.

But no, it was always about _her_. Even now, when Texas had destroyed everything he built, everything he worked for, and Allison dead decades, they both took precedence over her.

Carolina didn’t know why she should even be surprised—it had been that way since the man in the uniform had come to her door to tell her that her mother had died.

The Director was the Director, not her father, and he had escaped justice. He had manipulated, and he had tortured, and he had killed, and he had gotten away with it. He’d ruined the only good thing Carolina had ever had in her life, all so he could chase his ghost. She took a deep breath, and cursed York in every way she knew how. Because he was right, and she _hated_ that. She stared at her hands.

She couldn’t let him get away with it. Not just so she could keep her own ghost with her.

She knew exactly where her armor was stored. They’d been sloppy, storing it, and let her know where it was. At first, she’d thought it was because she’d be re-deployed when her physical therapy was done. Now she knew it was just a mistake.

She left with a bag over her shoulder, and the word _Epsilon_ buzzing in her mind.

York didn’t follow her.

“Goodbye,” he said to her at the doorway.

When she looked over her shoulder, he was gone.


End file.
